The advent of networked client devices (e.g., devices that are connected to a common network), such as Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) devices, within the home has created a mixture of different interfaces through which subscribers may consume multimedia.
Customer premise equipment (CPE) devices such as gateway products and set-top boxes (STB) provide Internet protocol (IP) Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) streaming of content to IP client STBs and other client devices within a premise. The content can be live (linear) or recorded and may be designated by a uniform resource identifier (URI). The typical channel tuning by an IP client is achieved by doing a HTTP Get on a published URI by the gateway. Gateways as well as IP high-definition (HD) set top boxes (STB) can also stream content to standard retail IP clients (e.g., gaming devices, tablets, mobile devices, etc.) using DLNA. Typically, the gateway/DVR (digital video recorder)/STB takes the role of a DMR (digital media renderer) and the retail client takes the role of a DMP (digital media player) per DLNA nomenclature. STBs may be required to offer media transport with discovery and remote control pass through using open industry standards for home networking. For example, CPE devices such as HD STB s/gateways may be required to source content streams to networked devices using open standards (e.g., DLNA).
Typically, because of the wide variety of potential differences between client devices, many issues are encountered when attempting to implement DLNA streaming from CPE devices to one or more client devices. For example, normally, for IP (Internet protocol) addressing in DLNA, the DMS (gateway/DVR/STB) can provide DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) IP assignment followed by link-local IP (address block 169.254.0.0/16) as a fallback mechanism for IP address assignment between DMS and the DMP client (IP clients such as game consoles, mobile devices, etc.). However, current IP addressing techniques create several unresolved issues. For example, the Ethernet port of a STB is expected to be open for forming a network without using an intermediate device such as a router. However, complications arise when different types of client devices may be connected to the STB via the Ethernet port. For example, some client devices may have DHCP capability while others may only support a link-local capability. Thus, assigning addresses to the connected client devices may become problematic. Moreover, routing issues are created by interface and address conflicts may arise when a STB uses link-local addressing over MoCA while using the same link-local address range for Ethernet. Therefore, a need exists for systems and methods enabling a seamless DLNA IP network formation between a STB Ethernet port and a retail IP client according to the best-effort model.
Like reference numbers and designations in the various drawings indicate like elements.